Thursday, April 12, 2007

A helping hand

Aaron Edsinger at MIT was kind enough to send us an email about a robot he's developing to help assist elderly or infirm people with everyday chores about the house, called Domo. He also supplied us with some videos of his robot helper in action.

As you can see, Domo is already pretty adept at handling objects and performing simple chores...

When Domo grasps hold of an object, it moves it around to get a clearer idea of its three-dimensional shape. It also responds to voice commands while sensors in its joints let it feel when it's hands are being pushed by someone. So a person can grab hold of something from Domo or move its arm toward to the correct object. Domo owes much to two other famous MIT robots, Cog and Kismet and the family resemblance is plain to see.

The videos above are very impressive. I can well believe that, in a few decades time, his descendants could be helping people about that house. But we'll definitely need more powerful computers. Domo currently relies on a cluster of 15 computers just to grasp a box of crackers.